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Ditto. I think I read somewhere that the top 1% of income earners in America are paying like 20% of the taxes. People always eyeroll at that, but I think that's an absolutely astounding figure. I'm like - you WANT to give more? :eek:

Not to mention the fact that personal income taxes only account for like 45% (or so, I don't really know the exact figure) of governmental incomes. As a matter of fact if you were to subtract revenue from personal income taxes in 2007 from the 2007 federal budget, the 2007 federal budget would only be as low as the year 2000's budget. The government has plenty of other revenue streams besides personal income tax.

If a person earns his money legit, who are you to limit them on what they want. They can buy anything damn they want. You might believe in taking more from the rich but I don't. The government is just plain greedy.

Isn't it funny that now that Buffet and the like have their billions that they couldn't spend in a lifetime, they suddenly are alright with taxes being raised. But us poor schlubs who would like to invest or save to get a little bit more of a comfortable lifestyle are SOL because those that got their's suddenly want to seem high minded and magnanimous.

Isn't it funny that now that Buffet and the like have their billions that they couldn't spend in a lifetime, they suddenly are alright with taxes being raised. But us poor schlubs who would like to invest or save to get a little bit more of a comfortable lifestyle are SOL because those that got their's suddenly want to seem high minded and magnanimous.

That was actually the starting point of the YT conversation. I commented that I'd rather fund my own retirement and opt out of Social Security, which of course, means I secretly want all the Baby Boomers to starve to death in their old age.

Ditto. I think I read somewhere that the top 1% of income earners in America are paying like 20% of the taxes. People always eyeroll at that, but I think that's an absolutely astounding figure. I'm like - you WANT to give more? :eek:

An enormous percentage of taxes are payed by a minority of Americans:
The Top 1% of taxpayers pay 29% of all taxes.
The Top 5% of taxpayers pay 50% of all taxes.
Our tax system is not so much progressive as it is confiscatory -- Frederic Bastiat called this phenomenon "legal plunder." A progressive tax is based on the premise that those with more income can afford to pay more taxes, and conversely, those with little or no income should pay no tax. However, a quick look at Graph 1A below shows that the U.S. tax system has become far beyond progressive. Fully half the taxpayers contribute almost nothing in individual income taxes.
The Top 1% of income earners (comprising about 1 million families) earn about 15% of the total income earned by all wage earners in the United States, yet they pay almost 30% of all individual income taxes.
Furthermore, the Top 1% are shouldering a roughly 50% higher proportion of the overall income tax burden than they did in 1977.
The argument most oft used against tax breaks are that they benefit only the wealthy. It is clear from even a cursory look at the numbers below that the 'wealthy' will receive the majority of any income tax reduction because they pay a disproportionately huge percentage of the income taxes! To structure a tax break such that those in upper income brackets are excluded would constitute nothing more than transfer of wealth from those who have it to those who don't (i.e. legal plunder.)

True. So what you do is give the school staff the power to stop whatever happens. If it's verbal teasing, you give them the power to tell the kids to stop it. If it's rock throwing, you give them the...